These "charming Indie(-style) platforming-adventure games" (like Rime, Gris, Aer, or even Journey) are not usually quite for me. The feeling the devs would like you to feel whilst playing these games don't usually bubble up inside me when I play these, even though I certainly can and do become emotional when I play video games. If you're like me and are still curious about Jusant, here is what I thought. If you're the opposite, I'd just disregard this review and read some of the other ones you find.
I booted up Jusant because I had a few days of Xbox Game Pass left and read multiple positive reviews (both by critics and players) about it. It's quite short at 3-4 hours (though it took me 5, maybe because I read every letter), so why not just play through it in an afternoon or two.
Ultimately, my experience with Jusant was pretty much the same as with the games I've described above, though closer to Journey and Gris than Aer and Rime (which is to say I thought it was above average in its category of games). Gameplay was enjoyable, I like the visuals and the soundtrack has some good songs in it, but the payoff to both the main story and the side story told in letters were both 'meh' because despite heavy lore dumps in letters at times, a lot of questions remain unanswered about this world. So much so that I find it hard to come to my own conclusion as to what happens after the ending, which is something many games ask you to do and usually feel satisfactory in doing so.
To go into it a bit more in-depth, gameplay consists of two things. The main part, which is climbing. You are an unnamed wanderer who starts close to the Sand Plains, which, to my understanding, is the bottom part of this so called "Tower" that you are about to ascend. You reach the "Low Tide" area, where you find some letters that clue you in on the story. From there, you start climbing upwards, finding some of the different areas that the letters previously described to you.
Each of these areas present you with additional climbing challenges, some of which remain for the rest of your playthrough and some of which are region-specific. For example, in the heat your stamina drains faster and roots of a plant wilt and disappear after a short while.
Climbing was fun enough for the duration of the game. It was not challenging but also not just a matter of pressing RT and LT all the time until the end. I've seen some call it meditative and, for the most part, I'd agree with that.
The other part of the gameplay is the collectibles. There are four or five things you can collect in this game: Letters, cairns which you can complete by adding a stone on top, frescos which you can light up, shells which you can listen to and altars which you can turn. The frescos look different, the shells give you different sounds each time and the letters obviously have differing contents, but as you can perhaps tell, these tasks are repetitive and don't serve a lot of purpose other than being busy work for achievement hunters.
The frescos look differently and have poems attached, which might impress you if you're into poems. I'm not a poems person myself. The shell sounds are OK but I didn't feel like there being 0 people in this tower besides you was a particularly good idea, so the shell sounds to replace them wasn't something I thought was sufficient to add to the game's atmosphere.
Finally, the letters consist of two types. There are Bianca's letters, which tell the story of a girl who leaves her home at a young age to join an expedition to the clouds and logs her progress. The second type consists of letters by past inhabitants of the homes you find these attached to and their worries, as well as newspaper articles to clue you in on the lore. While it helped in that final aspect, I didn't find most of these letters interesting and Bianca's story to not be worth the 15 minutes or so I've spent reading it.
The fate of the people in the tower is a sad thing for sure, but without really knowing much about the circumstances of them nor your character, I can't really say I knew enough to be able to care much about it all.
Despite that, the visuals, the climbing gameplay and the calm nature of it were enough to make this an enjoyable couple hours for me. You can (and should) avoid the non-letter and perhaps even shell and fresco side activities though, because they don't add much to the experience other than making it take longer.
I booted up Jusant because I had a few days of Xbox Game Pass left and read multiple positive reviews (both by critics and players) about it. It's quite short at 3-4 hours (though it took me 5, maybe because I read every letter), so why not just play through it in an afternoon or two.
Ultimately, my experience with Jusant was pretty much the same as with the games I've described above, though closer to Journey and Gris than Aer and Rime (which is to say I thought it was above average in its category of games). Gameplay was enjoyable, I like the visuals and the soundtrack has some good songs in it, but the payoff to both the main story and the side story told in letters were both 'meh' because despite heavy lore dumps in letters at times, a lot of questions remain unanswered about this world. So much so that I find it hard to come to my own conclusion as to what happens after the ending, which is something many games ask you to do and usually feel satisfactory in doing so.
To go into it a bit more in-depth, gameplay consists of two things. The main part, which is climbing. You are an unnamed wanderer who starts close to the Sand Plains, which, to my understanding, is the bottom part of this so called "Tower" that you are about to ascend. You reach the "Low Tide" area, where you find some letters that clue you in on the story. From there, you start climbing upwards, finding some of the different areas that the letters previously described to you.
Each of these areas present you with additional climbing challenges, some of which remain for the rest of your playthrough and some of which are region-specific. For example, in the heat your stamina drains faster and roots of a plant wilt and disappear after a short while.
Climbing was fun enough for the duration of the game. It was not challenging but also not just a matter of pressing RT and LT all the time until the end. I've seen some call it meditative and, for the most part, I'd agree with that.
The other part of the gameplay is the collectibles. There are four or five things you can collect in this game: Letters, cairns which you can complete by adding a stone on top, frescos which you can light up, shells which you can listen to and altars which you can turn. The frescos look different, the shells give you different sounds each time and the letters obviously have differing contents, but as you can perhaps tell, these tasks are repetitive and don't serve a lot of purpose other than being busy work for achievement hunters.
The frescos look differently and have poems attached, which might impress you if you're into poems. I'm not a poems person myself. The shell sounds are OK but I didn't feel like there being 0 people in this tower besides you was a particularly good idea, so the shell sounds to replace them wasn't something I thought was sufficient to add to the game's atmosphere.
Finally, the letters consist of two types. There are Bianca's letters, which tell the story of a girl who leaves her home at a young age to join an expedition to the clouds and logs her progress. The second type consists of letters by past inhabitants of the homes you find these attached to and their worries, as well as newspaper articles to clue you in on the lore. While it helped in that final aspect, I didn't find most of these letters interesting and Bianca's story to not be worth the 15 minutes or so I've spent reading it.
The fate of the people in the tower is a sad thing for sure, but without really knowing much about the circumstances of them nor your character, I can't really say I knew enough to be able to care much about it all.
Despite that, the visuals, the climbing gameplay and the calm nature of it were enough to make this an enjoyable couple hours for me. You can (and should) avoid the non-letter and perhaps even shell and fresco side activities though, because they don't add much to the experience other than making it take longer.